Skitter
by Goblin Cat KC
Summary: A look at the turtle's childhood and an issue not commonly spoken of in the sewers. New Movie Universe. slash OT4 implied. A tiny bit buggy, but not really much.


**Skitter**

by kc

**Summary**: The jungle was worse than the lair in one regard. A look at the turtle's childhood and a not commonly spoken of issue in the sewers.

**Other** **Info**: In the new movie universe. I'd say that I take a few liberties with the characters, but hey, turtlecest is commonly deemed ooc anyway, so who gives a flying f*ck, right?

**Pairings**: Raph/Leo given, OT4 overall.

**Warnings**: If you are easily susceptible to suggestion, (ie. if I were to say that the spider under your desk wasn't venomous, and you shuddered), you might not want to read this. It's...skittery.

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An hour has gone by. Meditation is useless. He spent so many hours locked in desperate mental focus in the jungle that he can no longer relax and let his mind open. It may take a year to undo the damage. He sighs and gives up, leaves the dark dojo and heads to the kitchen.

There are new snacks in the refrigerator. Michelangelo collected their groceries the last time, and he always splurges on what he can salvage or swipe out of the supermarkets. There are varying chips and chocolates and sweets and packaged noodles, bagged microwavable meals, bruised fruit in tupperware, most of it still good if passed their sell-by date.

None of it is laid bare on the counter. Everything is firmly wrapped, bagged, tied and covered so that nothing can get in or out. As he heated food in its sterile, plastic bag, he listened to the clicks and taps behind the bricks in the wall.

Roaches. Centipedes. Millipedes. Spiders. Ants. Insects march all around them, kept at bay by the powerful poisons Donatello spread around the lair. It's the worst part of living in the sewer. For a long time, they'd simply lived with the bites and stings, slapping away or crushing anything that came too close. Splinter had exhausted himself keeping his hatchlings safe from the bugs that would have eaten them alive, and later Leonardo dimly recalled having to resort to those insects to keep from starving.

Unpleasant memories. They all dealt with it in different ways, although Michelangelo's method is the most obvious. His little brother lives with the fear that the refrigerator might run empty one day, and often walks through the kitchen not to eat but just to make sure the food is still there. His concoctions of potato chips in ravioli or pickles in ice cream are less about a strange palate and more about celebrating everything he has.

Donatello is a picky eater. In the rare event that he has spare time, he'll occasionally count calories and calculate his ideal body mass index and weight ratio, or at least as far as he can estimate between turtle and human. Raphael eats anything, bulking up the fastest and establishing himself as the biggest turtle. If it isn't poisonous or outright disgusting, he might complain but he'd still eat. As infants, if one of them balked at eating something they crushed, he would gladly take it.

Leonardo usually ended up giving away his insect kills. Disgusting things, nevermind what he knew they ate. Filth and trash make up an insect's diet. He can't possibly eat something like that. He downs the bag of wild rice and preserved chicken in one go. He's the smallest of the four, and he knows part of his size is because he spent his childhood hungry.

Discipline keeps away the hunger pangs. Meditation, taking whatever was acceptable when it came and ignoring everything else as unclean, impure. Focus on his training, not the painful stomach cramps that twisted him in half. And as an older teen, life improved, rewarding his patience with delicacies ripped off human shelves--clean, fresh, and spiced. Some revulsions linger. Spaghetti is impossible after seeing clumps of worms in the sewers.

Then came the jungle. No Wal-Mart, no plastic seals and ziplocks, no bottled water. The local markets were open air, and the butchers slaughtered the animal minutes before it was cooked and on the plate. Flies crawled across the tables and knives, and the humans constantly waved their hands over their plates to clear away the bugs. Blood splashed on the ground and dust kicked up into the air, covering the goat or fish. On days that he snuck close to the cages, he saw fleas and ticks on the ground. Some animals were clean. Some weren't.

And the jungle was alive, noisy by day but a terrible roar at night. The snarl of a leopard and the grunt of a javelina were friendly sounds, real animals with him amidst an ocean of things with too many legs and hard shells. Ants infested the jungle floor. Grasshoppers leaped from tree to tree. Beetles as big as his hand, spiders as big as dinner plates, mantises as big as his arm--he woke up to them picking across his body, moving from one end of the hammock to another as a convenient bridge.

Sick memories of looking a roach in the eyes, being small enough to see one as a threat--the old fears and nausea came in a rush. He'd been thrown years out of his training, out of his discipline, back on the food chain with insects once again large enough to bite pieces out of him, in numbers enough to swarm. Every night they skittered around him as loud as the raindrops in a heavy storm. As heavy as stones as they crept across his arms, his face.

As he throws the rice bag in the trash, he spots a box of borax spilled behind the refrigerator. Like the dust of a village market, the poison is always close at hand, inches from where they ate. And there are more poisons of Donatello's own design scattered through the cabinets, the floors, the ceiling, their rooms. They know more about insecticide than their own ninja poisons, and the thought always comforts him.

He climbs upstairs, ignoring Michelangelo on his bed listening to bubblegum pop on his headphones, reading comic books in rapid succession, and passes Donatello as he feeds the fish in his aquarium--lionfish, colorful and deadly, just like everyone else in the lair. Worlds apart from the jungle's dull river fish and their endless assortment of parasites.

Raphael rests in his hammock, drowsing in a pleasant alcohol soaked haze. He spots Leonardo in the doorway, reads his look, and lifts his blanket invitingly. Leonardo crept in with him, careful not to jostle the net, and lay down beside and a little on top of him. A warm arm curls around him as the blanket covers them.

The skittering in the walls never stops. A roach trapped and blindly finding its way flutters and hums somewhere out of sight. Leonardo closes his eyes and buries his nose in the blanket, telling himself that the bugs are not actually in the room, that he is well up off the floor and that those aren't tiny points stepping across his skin, six or eight or a hundred legs tapping along his side--

"It's just your imagination," Raphael mutters as his eyes close. "Relax."

Like a hand brushing away an unwanted pest, his voice clears Leonardo's thoughts. Leonardo makes himself think about the katas for tomorrow's review. Tonight's meditation is pushed aside. The sounds behind the wall were closed off. Tomorrow he would rise early, practice forms, spar against Donatello, then Michelangelo as they traded off. Then would come lunch, afternoon practice, meditation, and maybe an hour of tv with his siblings fighting over the remote. Then back here in one of their beds, or with one of them in his bed, reading through his newest book, a battered copy of Mongolian history, and then sleep. Discipline and focus to still his thoughts and make himself believe that the lair was quiet.


End file.
